A Day in the Life of Chaos

Karen Goerler I think a lot about aging.  I think it is because I am aging.  Well in truth we all are.  It is an inescapable reality of life.  I wrote a blog called “Today is the Youngest I Will Ever Be.”  I think as you grow older this phrase becomes increasingly apropos.  Like a computer we constantly run a systems diagnostic on our body and each pain, creak, or scatterbrained moment becomes a source of questions.  Is this a sign?  Is it the beginning of something or only momentary discomfort?  Did I do something I shouldn’t have or is this the moment of inevitable decline?   As we grow older our lives and physical well-being are impacted by the lives of those we have grown old with.  Like soldiers in a battle when one falls the others look around and wonder if they will get the next bullet.  Recently a high school classmate of mine passed away.  She was only 50.  She was a good person who lived a good life.  There was no simplistic explanation of why cancer should have ta

A different face but the same school in spirit There are few professions I admire more in life than one of the most under paid ones, the teacher.  Perhaps the fact that both my parents were teachers has augmented my understanding and sympathy.  My father was a professor at the university level and my mother taught those that no one else wanted to teach.  I guess it was a tribute to her dedication that she would actually take up the mantle and give a final shot to those whom mainstream education had cast aside.  She worked for a program called S.A.V.E. that acted as a kind of last chance for many kids to get a diploma.  Each student was filled with a litany of problems.  Difficulties in life that made education seem like an unneeded add on.  On the other hand, education was the one element that provided any structure to their lives.  I am sure that the social studies teacher/gym teacher/part time counselor and sympathetic ear my mother was definitely must have helped. Hardly a day